Friends` T-shirt Creations Make `Me` Statement

September 5, 1985|By Malinda Reinke, Staff Writer

DELRAY BEACH — Ray Jones had that look in his eyes. He was sitting in the parlor of his Delray Beach home talking about painting T-shirts in the middle of the night and how you can get so tired you make mistakes.

But he had a grin on his face as if he knew something.

``Look, I`m going to tell you about Ray,`` Ray`s best friend James Bassa interrupted. ``Ray tries to fool me. We were painting the shirts. It was 3 o`clock in the morning, so he was getting sleepy.

``I look over and I see him mixing this paint, and it`s pink. Pink. And then he starts painting these little checkers on the sleeves and around the neck of the shirt.

``I said, `What are you doing?```

It turned out to be the most unique shirt they had created up until then, Bassa said. And whether Jones was playing games or painting in his sleep, the checkered T-shirt has remained one of the most popular designs and the one that caused all the commotion at Tequila Willie`s where the Me-Shirt made its fashion debut in early August.

``Ray wore it there one night,`` Bassa said, ``and people kept asking, `Where`d you get that shirt?`

``And then they said, `Can you make me one?` ``

Almost from the time they met as children playing midget league football for the Delray Rocks and singing gospel songs with the J.J. Hill Gospel Youth Choir, Jones, 22, and Bassa, 23, knew they had more in common than growing up in Delray Beach.

They had high goals, they said.

They had good supportive families.

They had a sense of who they were, and they said they wanted a little more from life than a small town can offer.

``Ever since we`ve been in college, we`ve both been trying to think of something special to do,`` said Jones, a senior in the industrial engineering curriculum at Purdue University. ``Our goals are really high. We were always trying to get into something.``

``Anything to get us out of the rut,`` Bassa said, who will graduate with a degree in accounting from Florida Atlantic University next year. ``We would go to the mall and sometimes we`d see something somebody made. Some little novelty thing. Ray would say, `We could`ve done that.` ``

``At first we thought about getting into real estate,`` Jones said. ``Then we thought, let`s not try something so big right now.``

Then along came the idea for the Me-Shirts, they said.

Me-Shirts are personalized T-shirts. They make a statement, according to the Me-Shirt creators. With painted symbols and words, they tell people about the Me-Shirt wearer.

The color symbolizes the wearer`s personality and, in fact, Me-Shirt purchasers often are interviewed before the shirt is painted, Jones said.

About 20 Me-Shirts have been sold to friends or to people at the Boca Pointe Racquet Club where Bassa works as an aerobics instructor. What started as a whim and turned into a hobby soon may become a business, said the shirt painters.

Bassa picked up a piece of cardboard he and Jones had used for brainstorming the day they decided to make the Me-Shirt. On it were examples of what a shirt might say.

I`m energetic and I enjoy a great game of racquetball. I`m independent. I`m me.

I love to dine and wine, but all for free. I`m cheap. But I`m me.

And painted in bold big letters, one more -- THIS LIGHT WILL NOT BE PUT OUT.

Jones and Bassa admit that T-shirt designing is a long way from industrial engineering and accounting careers, but they say it is something that could catch on. If they had a backer, they say, they could make the Me-Shirt a big business.

``James and I have always thought big,`` Jones said. ``A lot of people tend to think we`ve forgotten where we came from, but that`s not so. We`re just trying to better ourselves.``

``Delray is still considered a small town,`` Bassa said. ``Ray and I, we`ve both traveled a lot and seen a lot. We just want to use what we`ve learned along the way. Everyone should have something they`re tied to, and this is something we came up with.

``The shirts will say things like I`m energetic or I`m talkative or I`m nosey,`` Bassa said. ``A lot of people today don`t really see themselves as being anything or doing anything. What we`re trying to get across is they are individuals and they can do things.

``The one thing we`ll never paint on our shirts is I should have,`` he said.